coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success,
or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen. - john le carre

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Okay, Good Man is straight-up, cracked-out, full-on rock'n'roll Doctor Who -- I'm not sure how much caffeine Moffat pumped into his cast for this one but it is so totally absolutely worth it in every single possible way. It's such a frenetic rollercoaster of goodness, in fact, that it's kind of difficult to write anything about it.

I'm not even going to try to go over the story here. Suffice to say the big reveal is revealed: River is...well, River is River. She's also Amy and Rory's daughter but, really, you had ample time to figure that out during the season so it's not worth holding your breath through the whole episode waiting for it.

That said, the final reveal scene -- even without the reveal itself being a huge gasp-inducing moment -- is just...really really great. There's Amy and Rory and the Doctor and River and hugging and sexual innuendo and so much emotional energy passing between the characters that the screen practically crackles. It's just...sweet in the best possible way.

Other points of interest...

The good man. Clearly, as self-identified, the good man is not the Doctor: "Good men don't need rules. Now is not the time to find out why I have so many." Okay, good, I'll just be over here crouched in the corner whimpering gently, then.

This leaves us with relatively few options for the good man -- so, really, it's Rory. Which is kind of awesome because the show needs more Rory. Rory is coming from a relatively simple place: he wants to get his wife back and keep his family in one piece. It's not exactly a revolutionary goal in life but, given the events at the end of The Almost People, you can't blame him for being a bit tetchy: "Do I need to ask the question again?"

Rory has come such a long way from The Eleventh Hour -- and then, in a way, he hasn't. Rory has always been both observant and determined and, really, those qualities have only been enhanced by travelling with the Doctor, as the second half of the sixth season proves. He has a very handy knack of not being distracted by non-essentials: he sees the odd thing out or the thing that should be there and isn't and his habit of dogged insistence is extremely useful.

And the Doctor is not a good man in this; he doesn't even follow his own self-established rules, as Lady Vastra and Dorium Maldovar take a certain amount of pleasure in pointing out to him. The whole conversation with Colonel Manton ("Colonel RunAway") is just fucking terrifying; it's as close as the Doctor has come in quite awhile to losing it and it's so very very bad when he does that. And, of course, he gets bitten in the ass for it as Madame Kovarian waltzes off into the wild blue yonder with baby Melody quite neatly.

The secondary characters in this episode are fantastic, some of the best in the season: Jenny, Madame Vastra, Dorian, the Headless Monks, the Fat One, the Thin One, and Commander Strax. The baddies, particularly Madame Kovarian -- I wish I felt...better about. She's a little...uncentered. It's not clear why she's doing what she's doing or, even when Moffat tries to make it clear, it's still unclear what she gets out of it.

So, Scandal in Belgravia. I can't even begin to recap the story for you because, honestly, I'm sorta confused as to what happened. I think the actors were confused as to what happened. I'm damn near certain the writers were.

There was the pool. And then there was a phone. And some pictures. And a dead hiker. And a naked woman. And the phone again. And Mycroft being seriously bitchy for no good reason. And the phone again. And....yeah, I don't know.

Moffat. Gatiss. We all know you can do better than this. WTF, guys. Seriously. Pull your fingers out and do a third draft next time.

And if you ever ever write another female character as hampered, pointless, uneven, whiny, and generally useless as Irene Adler (who could have been so completely kickass I can't even stand to think about it), I will end you. Me, and every fangirl out here with a sense of self-respect.

Also? Moffat, stop ripping off your Who storylines for other things. Most of us watch both. Cribbing River Song to make a cod dominatrix version? Not. Cool.

(And while we're on that subject, I don't think you need to whap someone around with a riding crop after you've tranked them. One or the other. Not both. Both was just going for a forced 'sexy' moment that didn't work. If it had worked, I'd've forgiven you much. But it didn't. And if you'd realised it didn't and then let it drop, I'd've forgiven you. But you didn't. It didn't work -- and then you kept pushing it. Realise when the horse is dead, fellas.)

The best thing about Scandal is the few moments of Moriarty at the beginning. Oh, that, and John, Sherlock, and Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson wins all the things in this -- as does Sherlock coming to her defense from the American (really, Moftiss? really?) thugs who break in to interrogate her. And Molly. Molly can share the things with Mrs. Hudson for finally stepping up for herself and telling Sherlock off -- much to the apparent amazement of everyone else in the room -- bar Lestrade, who was still trying to get over her dress.

I really cannot fully express my disappointment in this episode. It was a complete let-down after the tight, well-thought-out, detailed, character-rich storytelling that was the bulk of the first season to get this kind of sloppy rubbish that didn't seem to know where it was going, what it was doing, or what story it was trying to tell.

Monday, January 9, 2012

To understand the rest of the post, I suggest you click through to it although it is NSFW unless you have a sheltered cubicle or an understanding boss. (It isn't someone dancing naked covered in chocolate, though; no naughty bits are revealed.)

The email dialogue between myself and friend ended like this:

Myself: i wonder if he went full monty...? why is he doing this?! did someone just yell 'hey, chris, take 'em off?'

Friend: From all accounts, that seems most likely. But I think the real question is not why he's doing it, but rather - why he's not doing it more often? Public good, and all.

Myself: maybe this should be pointed out to him...?

The conversation then took a slight left turn at this point into a discussion of what other people should do other things for the general public good.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

I really didn't enjoy either The Rebel Flesh or The Almost People that much. And despite having my DVDs of the first half of the season back in hand now -- and having had them for the best part of two months now, I think -- I really can't be bothered to watch them over again. I sort of have the same relationship with them as I did with The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood in season 5. Yes, they're good; yes, they have some interesting things to say; but they boiled such complicated, interesting conversations down into such Manichean dualities that I got very irritated.

This isn't to say that I wanted to use the discs for Flesh/People like Frisbees as I did for Earth/Blood. No, there wasn't anyone like Ambrose (*fists of rage*) in these episodes and I didn't want to kill anyone. I mostly felt sorry for everyone involved, particularly Jennifer who was so badly used by the whole storyline.

And then, of course, all sympathy gets diverted to Rory 'cause man does he get a rough deal. Just...really really awful.

But I'm a) not sure why this story had to be a two-parter; and b) not sure...well, I'm just generally not sure.

If the whole point of the 'ganger storyline is to convince us that gangers are people, too, then why does the Doctor dissolve the 'ganger Amy? It's no more her fault she's a 'ganger than it was...any of the other 'gangers! Why doesn't she get a chance to do her own thing like the others? If nothing else, wouldn't she be a valuable link back to whoever has the real Amy?

And what's with the 'gangers anyway? Are we supposed to cheer their political and personal emancipation? or worry that they're all going to turn out crazy huge blobs like Jennifer? And just...what...really was the point of all that?

Well, clearly, the point was to get us to the last ten minutes of The Almost People: that is, really, the only part of the show that advances the story arc at all.

Yes, there are some nice character moments outside of that -- Rory and 'ganger Jennifer; Amy and the 'ganger Doctor or the Doctor at all, really; the Doctor and Cleves -- but they're all rather brief and not enough to sustain the whole story.

And, yes, the thing with Jennifer-the-Blob at the end is...really quite unsettling. But I'm not sure it deserved to spark a conversation in the Guardian about whether Doctor Who was getting too scary for kids! After all, that's a conversation that's been going on since...oh, probably about...the end of December, 1963? and it's not very interesting. Mary Whitehouse proved just how uninteresting it could be!

Really, I feel that Flesh/People just kind of mark time to get you to the real meat of the season: A Good Man Goes to War.

Monday, January 2, 2012

And welcome to 2012, ladies and gentlemen and anyone else who might be hanging about the place.

Random thoughts follow...

Believe it or not, I do have a post in the works on The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People but I keep getting distracted by the fact that there are episodes after that that I want to talk about way more and have you all seenThe God Complex? To say nothing of The Girl Who Waited! I mean, the hell!

Additionally, has anyone seen Tintin? Is it worth my braving a Peter Jackson movie for the sake of a Steven Moffat script?

In other news, I've finally finished the fourth season of Supernatural which was...very much like the rest of Supernatural, to be honest with you. I've come to the conclusion that the show is very much of a muchness but it's a muchness I very much enjoy, so I'm going with it. Dean snarks, Bobby growls, Sam pouts, Castiel scowls and they're all pretty madly attractive while they do it so what's not to like?

I also may have located a class -- or two -- that I can take via my workplace benefits this spring. You'd be amazed at the paucity of Harvard's history offerings. At least, I was amazed. Perhaps I am easily amazed? This, too, is possible.

Why does AMC always have to start their Walking Dead marathons with the beginning of season one at about noontime so that by the time they get to the season two episodes I need to get caught up on, it's about 9 o' clock at night? Is this fair? Some of us zombie-lovers have to get up early in the morning, y'know!

And, finally, is it fair that the latest Underworld movie is going to be in 3-D? Is it right and reasonable to deprive those of us who wear glasses of the fair Kate in tight leather?